Robbie Robertson Quotes

It doesn't matter how big the set is or how florid the music is: if it doesn't touch people's hearts, then I don't want to be in it.

I think little things are more powerful because they're more honest, so people feel them more strongly.

I always say my music is like dark blue or black, like a punch to your gut that feels really good.

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

When works get too intellectual, they lose their intensity.

What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.

I'm moved by what I hear about the power of music.

That's the thing about the blues: It's one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

Music has a way of getting inside all of us and lifting us up.

I want to do things or write things that make people feel a bit more beautiful or tragic or something because there are so many other things than just funny.

We could make the most beautiful film in the world, but if it doesn't have a heart beating underneath it, then no one's going to be interested.

The whole deal with my music has been the emotional quality.

French horn can be very epic, and at the same time, very dark and moving.

Once I heard how deep music could touch people and what it can make you feel and all of these emotions it could bring out, I was really fascinated with it all.

The power of music is a wonderful thing. It can make us happy, make us cry. It can make us forget and make us remember.

Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't.

When you're just singing a beautiful melody with a story that's true to the heart, you don't need a lot of embellishment.

Simplicity is always a virtue. One kid on a riverbank working out a Stephen Foster tune on his new harmonica heard from the correct esthetic distance projects more magic and power than the entire Vienna Philharmonic and Chorus laboring (once again) through the Mozart Requiem or Bach's B Minor Mass.

My chops were not as fast... [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.

Berlin's great secret is that he says exactly what he means; sometimes he hits a gigantic line both musically and lyrically -- almost Wagnerian in its strength.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

I don't care how much people understand what it is that I'm doing, except if they're players in my ensemble or other ensembles. I just want people to be moved by the music. If you're not moved by the music, then everything else falls away. You're not interested in the text, you're not interested in how it was done, and you're not interested in interviewing the composer and all the rest of it.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.